Hurting and in pain and looking for hope? In times of bereavement watch, read and listen to stories of hope and recovery.
The soul and grief are deeply intertwined in many spiritual and philosophical traditions. It’s only natural that after someone dies, those they leave behind will start to question and want […]
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Unsolved Homicides Destabilize Many Lives Homicide is a complicated loss, and its reflection resides in a constant state of metamorphosis with each new experience that follows in its wake. In […]
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Grief is Love, Joy is Love What words come to mind when we think of love? I think of emotion, devotion, adoration, and respect. Each person may have their own […]
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I was a member of the church choir for 20 years. A line from one of the songs we sang keeps rattling around in my mind: “Love is stronger than […]
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I write about grief to help me through the ‘grieving process’ after the loss of my twin. I hope it helps you too. Grief is complex; it’s based around individual […]
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Knowing About Grief Helps with Grieving My father died almost two weeks ago after two weeks in the ICU. For most of that time, he was on a ventilator. My […]
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Grief can throw a spanner in the works, but it can also bring acceptance and closure positively, so long as we’re honest with ourselves. Our experiences can distort our perception […]
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The Visibility of Change My children are tweens/teens. When I think about their development throughout the years, it is clear and tangible to me the ways in which they have […]
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Spirituality and healing around grief is inevitably an individual and personal journey, with no two people sharing the same experiences. While my interest in spirituality started in childhood, my spiritual […]
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Grief is a highly individual and complex emotional experience that manifests differently in each of us. People may express their grief through a variety of emotions and behaviours. Some common […]
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Changes in Seasons North of the equator, and north of the tropics, we are in the season of winter. The grass is brown and bare branches are all around. It […]
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Grief and the grieving process are deeply personal and complex experiences that can have different effects on us. It’s true that shared experiences of loss can create a sense of […]
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Merry Go Round My mom made it a priority to take me and my siblings to the Smithsonian to visit the touring exhibits that came through the D.C. museums. I […]
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A Christmas Promise On a long-ago Christmas Eve, I made my last visit to a patient as her hospice chaplain. I was honoring a promise made weeks before. While a […]
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Joining a Grief Support Group Joining a support group can help those who are grieving. Many support groups were available in my area, and they differed widely. Before I joined […]
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Making Sense of Grief At first, I thought grief was an amorphous vapor that made your breathing labored and that obscured your view…temporarily. But I was wrong. Losing My Grandmother […]
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Contextualizing Grief In my experiences, grief has been most commonly recognized with a major event: the loss of another human being. There seemed to be a framework for understanding the […]
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Compassion is the Most Precious Gift The holiday season is upon us and with that comes a blur of sights, smells, memories and hopes. Some are pleasant and even joy […]
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In Search of Healthy Grieving I wanted to experience “healthy grieving.” These words often appear in grief articles and books. Did healthy grieving mean sobbing like crazy, being confused, or […]
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So how do you know if you’re making progress on this messy journey called grief? I remember going through seasons where a trigger would wipe me out or tears would […]
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During the intense period after the loss of my favorite people, many questions ran through my mind. These are questions you might ask in your pain. Will the tsunami of […]
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After months of trying to outrun the ache and sprint toward some imaginary silver lining, I realized that running from the pain can leave you crushed, lonely, and confused. In […]
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Have you ever gotten news that literally took your breath away? I surely have. It was the late-night call that my mom—my healthy, hilarious, newlywed mom—was gone. Nobody could have […]
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Writing Helps Bereaved Whenever you set out to write a book, an important first step is clearly defining your audience. When I started dreaming about Uncrushed, I assumed it would […]
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Circle Up for Healing According to the well-known Western European myth of Camelot, King Arthur gathered his knights at a circular table. He chose that particular table configuration to foster […]
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‘Soul Senses’ Can Help with Grief The soul senses are the primary means by which we are able to apply the principles of love, connection, and trust. We need the […]
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Preparing for Your Winter of Grief In Vermont where I live, the change of seasons brings a significant shift of feeling and sensation. The sounds change as birds migrate, cicadas’ […]
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After losing two children, Carolyn and Matthew, and then having two more children, Kim and Danny, my wife explained a recent experience. Holding Child After Death She said: “The other […]
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Losing Mom as a Teen I was only 18 when my mother succumbed to pancreatic cancer. However, in the following two decades, I persistently avoided the profound pain of being […]
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In recent months, I have been struggling with what I have come to see as a different stage of my grief journey. I wrote about that challenge in my last […]
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Dreams Can Help the Grieving Process I began preparing myself for my mother’s death a long time ago, even before she came to live in our community so that we […]
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Dating After a Spouse-Loss Our society has so many expectations for us after our spouse has died. We should grieve—depending on the expectations of our friends, religious traditions, or workplace […]
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Finding Authenticity Through Grief Seven years ago, I embarked on a journey that would redefine the very essence of who I was. Becoming a solo mom after a lifetime spent […]
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Grief Has Many Emotions With my mother gone and my father gone, I often felt abandoned. I’d look around and notice other families. Families that seemed happy. But seeing them […]
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Knowledge of Our Mortality Sometimes they are nudges. Other times, pokes. More rarely, thankfully, they are punches in the gut. Most often, I think of them as “mortality slaps.” Whatever […]
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Lessons from Wild Boy He was a toddler who played with plastic dinosaurs, Tonka trucks, and dirt. His older sister made me feel like an accomplished mama because whenever I […]
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“It is, in the end, the saving of lives we writers are about. We do it because we care. We care because we know this: the life we save is […]
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Tasks of Mourning Psychologist Dr. William Worden’s four tasks of mourning give grounding to much of grief research today. Worden saw mourning as the outward expression of grief. The tasks […]
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Making Sense of Grief Through Mindful Writing One way to address grief-filled paradigm change and transition is to engage in mindful writing exercises. Telling one’s story mindfully means sharing it […]
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Cascade of Losses One July day, just ten days after his twentieth wedding anniversary and two days before his oldest child’s eighteenth birthday, my brother fell from the sky. I […]
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There are many types of losses. Two that occur often in the workplace are loss of a parent and loss of a child. Here are some thoughts about these two […]
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What to Say to a Family After Suicide The death of a loved one is a catastrophic loss, but when a loved one has taken his or her own life, […]
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The Open to Hope Foundation Day of Hope and Healing welcomes; Ron Villano, MS, LMHC, ASAC, CCH. He is a leading expert in working through change. As a father who […]
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With a remarkable 35-year association with The Dougy Center, the inaugural bereavement center for children in the United States, Dr. Donna Schuurman stands as an internationally recognized authority in the […]
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Join Dr. Gloria Horsley and her fiancé Dr. Frank Powers AKA Golden Dating Doctors for an interview with widow Joan, a contestant on ABC’s Golden Bachelor, discussing her experiences and […]
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Feeling like your grief is not validated? Join Dr’s Heidi and Gloria Horsley and their guest Dana Lerner LCSW psychotherapist and bereaved mother of Cooper for a unique perspective on […]
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Are you or someone you know looking for support for a loss due to substance use? Join Dr. Heidi Horsley and Rebecca Horsley Bara and their guest Laura Vargas to […]
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Maggie Bauer is Christopher’s little sister. He died by suicide, August of 2012. Due to the loss, she has been involved with her local grieving community for 8 years giving […]
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Treasures in Grief, by Lo Anne Mayer
Open to Hope is an online community offering inspirational stories of loss, hope and recovery. We believe hope is the bridge between loss and recovery.
